


Ex Libris

by Musyc



Category: Discworld, Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Community: hoggywartyxmas, Crossover, Gen, Irma Pince - character, L-space, Libraries, Podfic Available, The Librarian - character, genfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-12
Updated: 2011-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-14 16:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Musyc/pseuds/Musyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Ook</i>, it said, and Irma closed her eyes and smiled a little smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ex Libris

_All libraries, everywhere, are connected by the bookworm holes in space created by the strong space-time distortions found around any large collections of books._

 _Only a very few librarians learn the secret, and there are inflexible rules about making use of the fact. Because it amounts to time travel, and time travel causes big problems._

 _But if a library is on fire, and down in the history books as having been on fire..._  
\-- Terry Pratchett, _Small Gods_

~**~

It happened between one stir and the next.

Irma sat in the little room at the back of the library, surrounded by her life. Cloth and boards for the books that need new covers, threads and needles for the ones that need new bindings. Gloves of cotton, dragonhide, and chainmail, because some books need gentle handling and some books need subdued. She has a little wooden chair and a little wooden table and a little glazed window. She has a little china tea pot and a little glass bowl full of little chocolate mints.

It's never bothered her that everything about her life is little. When she opens a book, she has the universe in all its bold and gleaming splendor. Outer space and inner space and all the spaces in the dusty, cobwebbed corners. She has the world when she's holding a book, and no one can take that from her. No one. Not even the boy she knew as Tom Riddle, who has given the order that the Hogwarts library is to be cleansed. Amycus Carrow smiled at her when he presented the command, his teeth deckle-edged and browning. Any book that failed to tell the truth about Muggles and Mudbloods, about their thefts and their lies and their vile, disgusting ways, is to be taken out into the courtyard and burned to ash.

Irma poured her tea.

She filled a little cup, a cup with a chip in the rim and faded bluebells around the base, a cup with one section rubbed white from her thumb resting against it for years upon years. She sugared the tea, two spoons and no more. No more and no less. She added milk from a little pitcher shaped like a cow, smiling at the memory of a student decades ago who had presented her the gift and whispered "Happy Christmas, Madam Pince" before bolting from the library with his cheeks as scarlet as the ribbon around the square box.

The tea eddied in little swirls as she flicked the handle with one nail; the steam rose in little spirals as she passed her hand over the cup. Irma closed her eyes and wrapped both hands around the cup to warm her fingers. Outside, the grounds were covered in frost and ice, cold as winter's heart. Inside, the castle was colder, fear and pain coating the students' eyes and souls. But there, in her little room with her little cup, there was no cold or worry.

None, because it happened.

She stirred her tea once, and she knew. She heard the ancient bookcases groan as the weight of a hundred tomes disappeared. She felt the air change as drafts blew through empty shelves where a hundred volumes weren't. Manuscript and omnibus, codex and incunabulum. Folio, quarto, octavo. Engraving, lithograph, illustrations. Gilt edges and embossed covers and marbled endpapers. All of it, gone in the space between stirs.

Irma put the little spoon aside and blew on her tea to cool it for the first sip. A leathery hand touched her shoulder, the briefest glance of orange touched the edge of her vision, and a hushed whisper of a sound touched her ears. _Ook_ , it said, and Irma closed her eyes and smiled a little smile. "Happy Hogswatch," she murmured. "Thank you."


End file.
